★ Driscoll at College
Aug 28th, 2008 by Ben
Mark came to college yesterday afternoon and gave us a mixed bag on preaching, theological education, running church and evangelism.
The take home message for me was this: get out more. He talked about how there are two types of young men in our city (he’s generalising). The majority blokes who drink, drive around a lot, try to get into girls’ pants and just act like the little stallions they are.
The other type are the Moore college students. We’re the Bible guys, he says. We read a lot, don’t go out much, don’t know many non-Christians and are in bed hours earlier than the other group. These two groups never meet. My way of conceptualising this is like two dimensions, that occupy the same space, but never intersect. I think he’s really on to something.
He said he was walking around the city late last Sunday night, and all the churches are closed and dark, because the evening church people have gone home, because they have work in the morning, but there are all these people gathered around, in bars, on the street, just hanging out, like they’re living in another world from the Christians.
So he said, get out more (my words). Get out more in your mind by looking at all the magazines in the newsagent, to see what people are reading and to see what their idea of heaven is, watch everything on TV for the same reason, and get out physically, go to places where people are and talk to them. To to the people who talk to the people and ask them what people’s hopes, fears, delights and passions are.
Interestingly, I think I’ve been getting a similar message from Christopher Ash’s book, Marriage: Sex in the Service of God, about which I’ve blogged before. He wants us to turn out from our marriages and families and use them for what they’re intended: the service of God through the service of others.
IE - get out more.
Driscoll said some dumb things too. He said the parish system doesn’t work. I know what he means, and he’s right, but it all depends on what you mean by ‘parish system’. In Sydney, we don’t primarily have an outdated, geographically limited, small-world structure that constricts our ministry. We have a metric butt-load of sweet land and buildings to go with it. We use those buildings (more and more) to gather communities of God’s people, whether they’re Korean fellowships, Aussies from the neighbourhood, or Christians in the media. We’ve made the parish system into something that works for us. It’s all very well to say people aren’t parochial anymore and have three centres to their lives (work, home, play), but you have to gather somewhere.
There are lots of things we don’t do that well, and that we want to do better, and he slaughtered a herd of sacred cows, but he didn’t stick the landing on that one.
Also, he basically doesn’t see singleness as a viable position for a Christian to be in, as far as I can tell. He understands 1 Corinthians 7 to be speaking into a particular time-limited context, and this means that if you want to be married, you should expect that he will provide you with someone.
Ouch.
He has this big (well-documented) beef with men not growing up and repeatedly tells people that he got married at 20, had his first child at 25, etc etc (which rubs it in again for those people who are 34 and aren’t married). I don’t know who he hangs around with, but if we’re talking about two groups of young men, it’s the non-Christian group who need to do the growing up. The young Christian men I know are generally very mature. We marry young, have families young(er than non-Christians) and spend less time on vanities like going to bars and playing xbox. You can’t have it both ways, Mark.
Since when is owning a home being a real man? I can accept that maybe it’s just part of a string of things he wants to associate with masculine maturity, but Mark’s picture of a man mature in Christ looks an awful lot like the American dream.
He does have an acute eye for diagnosing what’s happening in a culture, both Christian and otherwise, but he doesn’t always hit it. And I don’t think he realises when he doesn’t.
But he’s still a gift. And now I’m going out.
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Nice post. I think your criticisms are fair and worth keeping in mind lest we get swept up in all the funny sound bites (and all the genuinely good things Mark has to offer) and fail to see those areas where he is less helpful.
I call on Andrew Cameron to write something on singleness to get the counter perspetive. His lectures at college were the best thing I’ve come accross on the subject.
This was a good review - as it didn’t smack of “driscoll worship” - which to be honest, alot of what I’ve read does. I think people still have to use their God-given discernment to apply to what EVERYONE says, and not become so goo-gaa that you are not open to assessing. I thought you did a good job of agreeing, disagreeing and not sounding like a lovesick teenager, as I’m sorry to say, I think a lot of people do when speaking about mark.
Very well said Ben!!! Gosh, I was going to blog something and now all I’ll be doing is linking your blog.
thanks for putting some good, well-balanced thoughts down for us to read.
I’m 29 and single……bummmer.
At least I don’t still live with my mum : )
Hi Ben. I heard the recording of the session after chatting with a couple of people about it and reading your blog comments. That meant that a couple of the best lines I’d already heard, but I still found the whole talk refreshing. Part of that refreshingness was that it didn’t smack of “Sydney Diocese worship”. He respects Sydney diocese without in any way defining himself with respect to it. (Indeed, as far as I can work out he couldn’t have done what he did within Sydney diocesan structures.) His cool presumably comes from his not needing to be liked.
I found his take on contextual ministry helpful and genuinely missiological. The emphasis on observing, listening and engaging is exactly what missionaries are taught to do. (Of course, missionaries have the advantage that we don’t imagine we already understand the culture!). His ability to listen and analyse—and the power of doing so—was well demonstrated in this talk, which clearly hit a number of marks. Even your observation that “Mark’s picture of a man mature in Christ looks an awful lot like the American Dream” is, I think, a part of this. We become a light to those around us by modelling renewed humanity in context. Of course, we immediately worry about the problems of syncretism and compromise, which is both our strength and our weakness.
I appreciate your advocacy on behalf of the single.
My impression is that he was mostly worried about single men in ministry. In fact, he seemed to be telling the single women to get on with their lives and not stress about marriage, and the single men to find someone before they fall into temptation. Some happily married men do seem to find it hard to imagine contentment in celibacy. But since there are married men (even in ministry) who commit adultery and watch porn, I’m not sure getting married gets to the heart of the matter. Christian maturity does, and his whole issue about personal responsibility was the most personally challenging for me (having lived in properties paid for by the church since I entered college! :)).
I’m not going out just now. But I am wondering if watching Spider Man tonight might help me to better understand concepts of salvation in Western culture. Not to mention the cultural pickings in the ads…
@Marty: good request of Andrew to write a response. A lot of people will be (and are) talking about this. (Sorry your comment was delayed, mate - for some reason it was directed to spam by Akismet).
@jennifer: thanks. As I said, I think Mark’s got a lot to teach us, but I agree we need to be careful about how we think about him and his ministry. Someone at Engage said that we need CJ Mahaney to come out, that he’s the next guy we need. That bothers me.
@Craig: thanks, mate. Feel free to link all you want!
@AB: your perspective as a missionary is a helpful one. It may have been Mark who said this or he may have been quoting someone else, but it’s true that we admire people like Hudson Taylor for their dramatic contextualisation, but often don’t even contextualise the small amount we need to in our own culture. You said, “I’m not sure getting married gets to the heart of the matter [of male purity]. Christian maturity does…” and that’s exactly right, I think.
Hey ben,
do you know if there’s anywhere I can download a copy of this talk from?
Hi Haysey. It’s available on the college network for MTC students, and I think the fact that it’s there, rather than anywhere else, indicates that it’s probably not for distribution. Sorry, mate.
Ah, fair enough. Thanks for letting me know.
“In Sydney… We have a metric butt-load of sweet land and buildings to go with it. We use those buildings (more and more) to gather communities of God’s people, whether they’re Korean fellowships, Aussies from the neighbourhood, or Christians in the media. We’ve made the parish system into something that works for us. It’s all very well to say people aren’t parochial anymore and have three centres to their lives (work, home, play), but you have to gather somewhere.”
Although I agree we have been blessed with buildings and centres that we all use in many and various ways, is it fair to say Mark was having a crack at our “attractional rather than missional” approach to Church?
We need to “get out more” because no matter how many buildings we have, people simply arent “gathering” with us.
Matty, I think he works on an attractional basis as well. A lot of effort goes into getting people to Mars Hill church, and the place itself is really… well, attractive.
I do think our parish structure presents some difficulties. We are very wealthy, but much of it is locked up in property, which can limit our ability to be creative. Having said that, the properties are spaced out throughout the diocese, and I’d rather have them than not have them.
If Driscoll’s church can go from nothing to 8000 members and a whole lot of resources, we could do the same, just leap-frogging off our existing structures.
Agree and agree — point I was making was simply that the missing ingredient seems to be our lack of “getting out there”. I think our Churches should be attractional but not at the expense of going where the people are, nor as the primary means of reaching the lost.
That’s the truth.
“In Sydney… We have a metric butt-load of sweet land and buildings to go with it. We use those buildings [for gathering many groups including] Christians in the media.”
I wish there was a sweet metric butt-load of land at Christians in the Media! We’ve actually got the smallest amount of real estate of any church in the diocese.
Yes, there is a lot of money tied up in real estate. I wish we had the money to purchase adjacent land. But perhaps it would be cheaper to video stream the talk in HD to another building in the next suburb - like Mars Hill does.
We’ve actually got the smallest amount of real estate of any church in the diocese.
I think you should try and grab that Catholic church with the big tower down the road. Imagine what we could broadcast from there!